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With Windows 8, Microsoft dared to reimagine desktop and mobile computing. The future, it envisioned at the time, would revolve around touch interfaces. The company introduced its Metro UI (since re-branded to Modern UI) to address the growing touch-capable devices market. Unfortunately, its ambitious bet didn’t sit well with users.

The problem was simple. had put so much emphasis on the touch interface, that it made the operating system hostile for traditional keyboard and mouse users – the vast majority of its user base at the time, and even now.

In the three years that Windows 8 has existed, the company has released two major updates to its desktop operating system: Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update. To give you an idea of its impact (or lack thereof), all versions of Windows 8 put together have a market share of under 25 percent. In comparison, the six-year-old Windows 7 and decade-old Windows XP combine to power around 70 percent of all computers, as per the latest stats from marketing research firm Net Applications.

Microsoft hopes to change that with Windows 10, which is now available across 190 countries. The new operating system represents several major strategic changes for Microsoft. To ensure that there’s no repeat of the Windows 8 fiasco, the company has taken many precautions and bold new steps. Hoping to attract users and convince people to upgrade from older versions, it has made Windows 10 free for the vast majority of users.

But that’s not all. In an unprecedented move, on September 30 last year, Microsoft announced the Windows Insider program for developers and eager beta testers, and also released a premature developer preview of Windows 10 nine months ahead of the final release.

The reasoning was simple: in order to make sure Windows 10 was well received, Microsoft wanted to let users decide and suggest the things they would like to see in the final release and what things they could live without. With Windows Insider, Microsoft tempted enthusiasts to try out the new operating system and provide feedback. Over the course of the last nine months, the company has carefully listenedto users and has also made lots of useful changes.

But that’s not all. Microsoft is making a huge bet on Windows 10. It says that the new operating system will be the last version of Windows it will ever sell. It is changing its stand on how it perceives and distributes its desktop operating system. Instead of being sold as a product, Windows will soon become a subscription service, with constant incremental updates rather than major new versions. But how that pans out won’t be clear for a few years.

Getting Windows 10
If you are an existing Windows 7 or Windows 8.x user, you can get Windows 10 for free via Microsoft. Hopefully, you reserved your copy in advance. If yes, the update should show up soon, though there are some things you can do to speed up the process. If not, you can download the Windows 10 ISO or buy a fresh copy off retail, probably on a USB drive.

Installing Windows 10 is as easy as installing any other recent version of Windows. It is also pretty fast. Once the download is complete, or if you are installing it from a USB drive, it should not take more than half an hour

As always, there are various variants of Windows, though the choice is not as complicated as before. Here’s a little something we wrote earlier to help you decide.

Initial setup doesn’t take long either. Much like Windows 8, there aren’t many things that Microsoft forces you to bother with. The activation process should also ideally not be any problem. Microsoft says that it will automatically activate PCs upgraded from licensed versions of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Windows Insider members will also get the final Windows 10 build for free that will come pre-activated.

The company announced that users who don’t have any prior version of Windows installed on their computers, and those who are using pirated versions of Windows, will also be able to download and install Windows 10, but those copies won’t get activated until a valid Windows license is entered.

Design and interface
Before we look at the design changes and user interface in Windows 10, it is important to first look back and see how we got here.

Eight years ago at the D5 conference, veteran journalist Walt Mossberg asked Bill Gates and Steve Jobs if either of them were working on bringing a radical change to the desktop user interface. The Windows and OS X UIs had largely remained unchanged over the years.

Sure, icons and layouts have become more pleasant to look at, and thanks to ever-increasing pixel counts, more information can fit on one screen. But it is still largely the same interface Xerox showcased decades ago.

It was Microsoft that took the bold step to reinvent the user interface three years ago. Modern UI was the best shot – perhaps the only shot – at giving us a new perspective on what desktop operating systems can be.

“Touch, ink, speech, vision – those things come in, but they don’t come in as radical substitutes. I think you’re underestimating the degree of evolution because you have lived with it year by year,” said Gates in reply to Mossberg’s question. “These natural interface things are the revolutionary change.”

That’s true. Many don’t realise this, but the reason the current user interface became an instant hit had a lot do with its striking resemblance to real-life hustle and bustle. The overlapping windows on your desktop feel at home because that’s how things look in the physical world. You have a table with plenty of documents lying on top. You look at one page and that page holds the centre of your attention. Later, when you pull out a different page, that’s where your attention shifts. This underlying congruity between physical and visual aspects is what makes the UI work.

And it seems we will be stuck with it for years to come, which should be a good news to many. Microsoft is making sure that Windows 7 and Windows XP users don’t see Windows 10 as an operating system that brings crazy design changes. In fact, in a recent promo video, Microsoft touted the similarity between Windows 10 and Windows 7 as one of the USPs that it hopes will convince users to upgrade.

To do so, Microsoft is undoing many of the things people hated about Windows 8. The Start Menu, which got the axe in Windows 8, is making a return in Windows 10. The new Start Menu comes with some handy new features. For instance, it is now also home to Live Tiles that can live side-by-side with traditional application icons.

For those unfamiliar, Live Tiles are icons for Modern apps. They automatically update and display contextual information without the need to be clicked on. For instance, the Live Tile for a weather app will show you the temperature and forecast right there. Also, you can customise the size of the Start Menu as you see fit.

The logon screen is finally dumping the traditional square frame with a user’s photo plastered over a plain background. Instead, the company is making things visually appealing in the logon screen in Windows 10.

The taskbar has undergone a visual revamp as well. It now sports a more flat and metallic look. The Windows/ Start icon has been revamped as well, but perhaps the most significant addition to the taskbar is the inclusion of a search box. This could come really handy to users.

Windows themselves have become flatter than ever. The File Explorer looks refreshing. The ribbon menu tab in it now sports more options, as a result of which it looks denser and more organised. It now offers quick shortcuts to view the properties of a folder and to create a new folder.

The navigation buttons have become wider and flatter, and they look more elegant this way. The taskbar is also getting a minor makeover. In addition to the pinned and on-screen applications, the taskbar is now also the home to new system functions such as Cortana, Action Centre, and Task View.

Features
An operating system is as useful as its built-in features. This is another area where Windows 10 fares with flying colours. Here are some features that you will find interesting.

Cortana
Formerly exclusively available on Windows Phone, Cortana is easily one of the most fascinating features of Windows 10. The digital voice assistant amazingly understands your general queries. It accurately understood when we asked for the weather by simply saying “What’s the weather like?” and cracked corny jokes when we asked it to. You can also ask it to do mathematical calculations and look up bits of information.

In Windows 10, Cortana is your go-to search box for anything and everything. It is always ready for queries that you can make by typing in the text box or clicking on the microphone button and speaking out loud. You can also use the phrase “Hey, Cortana” to initiate a search query without moving your hands. By default this option is disabled, but you can enable it from the settings. Just ask Cortana to open “Cortana and Search Settings.” The first few hours could be annoying as Cortana might not pick up your accent and inflections, but it quickly adjusts and starts recognising your voice.

You can also use Cortana to set reminders for meetings and perform other tasks. One friendly reminder: be careful about the timings of reminders and appointments, as once you have saved that information, Cortana doesn’t let you edit it.

Cortana automatically checks things like weather and traffic conditions and suggests that you should leave early for your appointment if necessary, though this feature may not be available in all regions. Microsoft says that Cortana can become even more useful if you also use it on your smartphone. It will also be arriving on Android and iOS soon, in case you don’t own a Windows Phone device. In fact, an Android beta was leaked earlier this month.

That’s not all. You can have Cortana write emails for you. It can understand your dictation pretty well. You can also use it to open applications, play music and do a plethora of other tasks. Cortana can also keep you from getting bored. Much likeGoogle Now, it also maintains a dashboard that contains information such as updates from ongoing sports events, weather information, a curated list of stories recommended for your taste, and updates from the stock market.

Microsoft says that it is expanding Cortana’s functions to a handful of regionsincluding India. Once that happens, Cortana will be able to understand more local accents, idioms and phrases. We are looking forward to the rollout, though it needs to said that even without official support, Cortana seemed to work pretty well for us. Having Cortana significantly improves the computing experience. It doesn’t take long before you realise that.

Microsoft Edge
Windows 10 ships with a new Web browser called Edge. When it was announced, the company claimed that Edge is designed to handle modern Web design technologies. We can confirm that Edge doesn’t disappoint and works flawlessly.

Microsoft says that Edge is faster than Chrome, a conclusion it reached by pitting the two browsers against each other in three different benchmarking tools.

In our time with Windows 10, Edge worked just as fast as Chrome. It loaded Web pages without any layout problems. Edge also lets you annotate and doodle on Web pages, and comes with quick sharing option that can help you share pages you like with your remarks intact with friends and co-workers.

The new browser also has a reading mode that can strip distracting elements out of a page and create a clean layout with just the story text and images. Edge also integrates with Cortana, and there are several voice commands that you can use while browsing.

There’s one problem, however. While Microsoft claims that Edge will run Chrome extensions, it hasn’t shared when exactly will it push that support for public usage.

Modern apps
One aspect of Windows 10, which is a continuation of the Windows 8.x era, is the availability of Modern apps. Apps including Mail, Calendar, News, Music, and Photos can be downloaded from the built-in Windows Store. They still feel largely aimed at touch capable devices and don’t look so great running as desktop programs. Things haven’t really changed since their introduction in Windows 8, but Microsoft still hopes that users will give them a try.

The Photos app offers a number of handy new editing features, while Music sports a nice interface. The same can’t be said about the Maps app, which lacks depth. You can only view the map in aerial view or live traffic view, and there’s no way to send the directions to your phone.

The Windows Store too feels immature at this point of time. Microsoft touts features such as Universal Apps, apps that work on both desktop and mobile with the same binary. The idea is that you don’t have to purchase the same app twice on your phone and PC/ tablet, and it’s less work for developers as well. Unfortunately, there’s no indicator on the store right now to suggest if an app is universal.

Virtual Desktops
A major feature that can bolster your productivity, Virtual desktops lets you create and compartmentalise different virtual spaces in which you can group program windows together however you see fit.

Virtual desktops can be controlled using the Task View icon on the taskbar. You can drag-and-drop windows between virtual desktops, allowing you to quickly switch between them. Microsoft says you can create as many virtual desktops as you like.

To make it work, click on the Task View button (shaped like overlapping rectangles) available on the taskbar. It will open the a new pane. You will find the option to addNew Desktop in the bottom-right side. You can switch between different desktops by using the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + Tab. The Task View doesn’t yet let you change wallpapers in different desktops.

This is a feature power users will love, and anyone who doesn’t want to use it can ignore it. Several Linux distributions and OS X have offered similar features for many years.

Action Centre
Action Centre is one of the handiest features that Microsoft had introduced in Windows Phone 8.1. And now it is bringing it to the desktop platform.

The Action Centre shows all your system-level notifications and application updates in one place. It also gives you quick toggles for settings such as Airplane mode. You can also do handy things like activate your VPN and check network settings right from the Action Centre, just like a smartphone’s notifications panel.

t is quite similar to the Notification Centre available in OS X. It doesn’t look half as slick, but offers twice as many features.

Continuum
Hybrid 2-in-1 devices are amazingly useful, but going back and forth between tablet and desktop modes can feel jarring. With Continuum, a Windows 10 feature, Microsoft aims to fix that. As soon as you unplug your keyboard from a touch-capable device or fold it away, you will be prompted to switch the system into tablet mode.

The moment you do that desktop icons change their size, and other UI elements are adjusted to make things easier for you to operate by touch alone. For instance, when you switch to tablet mode, you won’t see the same Start Menu when you tap the Start button; instead you will be shown a full-screen panel of live tiles just like the Windows 8 Start screen, which is more convenient in that context.

Snap Assist
Another handy feature that we liked in Windows 10 is Snap Assist. Windows has had the capability to place different app windows next to each other for some time now. With the new operating system, Microsoft is taking it to the next level.

The new Snap Assist feature allows users to tile up to four apps side-by-side. To try this out, drag a window to any corner of the screen. If you still want only two apps to be placed side-by-side, drag each window to opposite edges of the screen.

Security
Security is one of the headline features in the new operating system. While a large chunk of security features – such as Passport and Device Guard – are designed for business and enterprise users, a couple will come in handy at home as well.

Windows Hello is a new security feature that lets you sign into your PC without typing in your password. Using your computer’s built-in camera, the system will be able to detect if it’s actually you trying to sign in or someone else. It can also let you in using a fingerprint or iris scan.

The feature requires specialised hardware, for example Intel’s depth-sensing RealSense 3D Camera, which isn’t available on many computers yet, and a Trusted Platform Module chip on the motherboard.

Other than that, several built-in features have their own security layers. Microsoft Edge, for example, includes a feature called SmartScreen that can detect and block access to malicious websites.

Other stuff
There are plenty of other parts that are moving forward. For instance, the new operating system supports DirectX 12, which should please gamers. The latest version of Microsoft’s API to make use of your system’s graphics card and processor holds the potential to significantly improve how games perform. There isn’t any game that supports DirectX 12 as of now, but there will be by the end of 2015.

Speaking of gaming, Xbox One users will be able to mirror their games onto their PCs using the Xbox app. You can find more information about that here.

Windows 10 also comes with a tool that can let you record your on-screen activities. It’s a handy feature that could help a lot of people make videos without needing a third-party app.

Inconsistencies
As well as Windows 10 has shaped up in the last year, it still doesn’t seem fully ready yet. There are noticeable glitches all around the new operating system. At times, the volume button, the Start button, and the Action Centre icon become unresponsive. In addition, the company’s stand on pushing updates to Home users, which recently broke some computers, suggests that those who value stability should wait a while before making the jump.

There’s also the question of app compatibility, since some legacy applications may not be compatible with the new OS. Check Microsoft’s compatibility centre to see if an application you depend on will work with Windows 10.

Verdict
Windows 10 is a welcome updated to the world’s most popular PC operating system update that should please a lot of users. Features such as Cortana, the new Start Menu, and Continuum make it very tempting to jump at the chance to upgrade for free. But the inconsistencies are a bit of a downer, and perhaps many will be better off holding out until the first major update to the OS is out, as it is likely to address many of these problems.

If you grew up with Windows, you should feel right at home in Windows 10, with the new features really adding to your overall experience. If you are amongst the minority you actually liked running Windows 8, the additions shouldn’t take away much from the things you enjoy right now.

Google inserted the “undo send” feature last month into an email management application called “Inbox” designed for mobile devices.

Gmail gets ‘undo’ button

SAN FRANCISCO: Google is making it easier to steer clear of the trouble that can be caused by a misdirected or inappropriate email.

An option to cancel the delivery of an email within 30 seconds of hitting the send button is now a standard safeguard in Google’s Gmail as part of a settings change made this week.

The “undo send” feature had already been available for the past six years in Google’s experimental labs, but that required Gmail users taking extra steps to get it.

Gmail account holders will now be able to activate the protection in Gmail’s settings. The tool delays the delivery of emails from five to 30 seconds after the send button is pressed to give users a fleeting chance to retrieve an email mistakenly sent to the wrong person or an ill-conceived communique.

Google inserted the “undo send” feature last month into an email management application called “Inbox” designed for mobile devices.

Gmail, started 11 years ago, is the far more popular email service. It now boasts more than 900 million account holders worldwide, according to statistics that Google released last month.

Samsung announced its Galaxy S6 on March 1, as expected, and many of the rumors about its design have proven true, including the decision to build both an Edge and non-Edge configuration (the Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 respectively), as well as the lack of a swappable battery or microSD card. Samsung has compensated for these removals with a bevy of new features meant to appeal to the broad market — whatever else one can say about the Galaxy S6, it’s definitely not a warmed-over retread.

New technologies

The Galaxy S6 will use the same Exynos 7420 SoC as the Galaxy Note S4. But the chip in the S6 is built on Samsung’s 14nm process, not the 20nm technology that the Korean manufacturer used for the older phablet. The result is apparently a phone that’s 35 percent more energy efficient while being up to 20 percent faster (no benchmarks are yet available, so we’re taking Samsung’s word on this one).

Other improvements include a shift from DDR3 to DDR4, a bump to 3GB of RAM as standard (up from 2GB),and 32GB of minimum storage, up from 16GB. Samsung is also putting a heavy push behind wireless charging this time around, with support for both the WPC and PMA standards. There’s a new front-facing camera at 5MP as opposed to the previous 2MP (with an F1.9 lens), and an even higher-density AMOLED screen that Samsung says features 77 percent more pixels than the Galaxy S5. New fingerprint sensors, a louder speaker, and a set of application-level improvements round out the device. It’s also unclear how much those additional pixels boost the overall display quality — while I like high-resolution smartphones as much as anyone, we’ve long-since passed peak pixel density and are firmly in the territory of diminishing margial returns where simply adding pixels is concerned.

The Galaxy S6’s Edge

One new capability that takes advantage of the S6 Edge is the ability to assign colors to up to five specific contacts. Assign blue to your mother, for example, and the edge of the phone will glow blue when she calls. Samsung claims this allows you to know who’s calling before even picking up the phone to see, but whether or not this proves a practical innovation probably depends on how you store your phone. If you keep it in a pocket or purse, it’s of less value compared to leaving it face-down on your desk.

Samsung is also claiming that it can fast-charge the device, with a full charge in half the time of the iPhone 6 and with 10 minutes of charge time delivering enough power to use the device for four hours. Whether or not this requires special hardware is unknown and it presumably refers to wired charging not wireless.

Will consumers bite?

Unlike the Galaxy S5, which was generally seen as a rehash of the Galaxy S4 with incremental improvements (and whose sales suffered accordingly), the Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge are clearly a huge revamp of the entire product line. Samsung is attacking on multiple fronts — its new phone will have far more cores than the iPhone, it’s built on a more advanced process technology, the company claims its camera is better (as shown below), basic storage is higher, wireless charging is available, and there are even more payment systems in place. Even allowing for the fact that the Apple A8 SoC sets records as far as performance efficiency, Samsung’s quad-core Exynos should be quite competitive.

Samsung is particularly proud of the device’s camera, though independent testing will have to confirm its quality.

The one missing piece of the puzzle is price. Previous rumors indicated that the S6 would be priced well above Apple’s iPhone, and the features Samsung unveiled today seem to suggest that’ll be the case. This isn’t a cheap device by any stretch, but Samsung may well take a shot at the premium market as opposed to allowing Apple to dictate overall device pricing. That’s a risky strategy — consumers have historically seen Apple hardware as the market leader, and that company has a long history of capturing the top of its particular market segments.

The S6 has the hardware specs to be the next leading lady of the smartphone market. But price and overall device experience will determine whether the company can seize that crown.

Xiaomi kicked off 2015 with the quiet launch of the Redmi 2 and this was soon followed by the Chinese company’s first major event that saw the launch of the new flagship phablet, the Mi Note, and the “even-better” Mi Note Pro alongside the Mi Headphones and Mi Box Mini.

Now, Xiaomi has teased another launch for Tuesday. The new teaser comes from Xiaomi’s gaming division and shows three rectangular boxes with a black background. Notably, the teaser image shared on the company’s Weibo account has a controller on top and what may be a game console alongside, tipping the launch might see the first Mi-branded console being unveiled. The teaser image includes a tagline that says, ‘Bigger is Better’.

Last year, Microsoft taking advantage of the lifted 14-year ban, launched its Xbox One game console in China. Sony is yet to follow, but has announced its intentions. It earlier this month delayed the January 11 launch of the PS4 console in China, without providing a reason and saying it would announced the new launch date in a separate notice.

At the sidelines of Xiaomi’s big event last week, the company confirmed that it is all set to launch the Mi 4 flagship smartphone in India on January 28. Xiaomi’s Vice President of International Operations, Hugo Barra, announced an event in New Delhi on January 28, which tied in with India Head Manu Kumar Jain’s statement that theXiaomi Mi 4 would launch by the end of the month.

Considering that Xiaomi follows a customary Tuesday flash sale for its handsets in India, it is possible the Mi 4 will go on sale for the first time on February 3 via Flipkart.

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Before Flipkart, there was IRCTC, which for most Indians was their introduction to e-commerce more than a decade ago. And even now, revenue from online ticketing on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp rules the roost, having exceeded the combined sales of Flipkart and Amazon India in the year ended March.

While both Flipkart and Amazon each said earlier this year that they had hit a billion dollars in annual gross merchandise value or total value of goods sold, IRCTC generated Rs 15,410 crore or nearly $2.5 billion through online ticket sales in the last financial year, up 24% from a year ago when it sold tickets worth Rs 12,419 crore. The figures are sourced from RoC filings.

Amazon and Flipkart are in talks with IRCTC as they look to tap the railway portal’s existing database of more than 21 million consumers

Since IRCTC doesn’t compete with any of the online marketplaces in India, both Amazon and Flipkart are in talks with the government-owned portal as they look to tap the railway portal’s existing database of more than 21 million consumers.

“Tie-ups with portals like Flipkart, Amazon etc are in the process under which these portals would like to sell their merchandise through IRCTC’s portal, it being one of the largest e-commerce sites in the entire Asia-Pacific region,” said Sandip Dutta, public public relations manager at IRCTC, which set a record in March when it booked 5.80 lakh e-tickets on a single day. That compares with 27 tickets a day when it began in 2002.

The government-owned portal posted a 33% increase in income at Rs 954.7 crore, which mainly includes service charges on tickets, sales of Railneer water, onboard catering services and licence fees from outsourced catering vendors. This is similar to online marketplaces where sales don’t include actual goods sold but instead count commission from sellers and revenue from advertisements on their e-commerce sites. Amazon Seller Services posted revenue (commissions) of Rs 169 crore while Flipkart Internet, which manages the portal, had total income of Rs 179 crore.

But unlike these privately owned marketplaces, IRCTC posted profit after tax of Rs 72 crore, up from Rs 59 crore in the previous year. Amazon, which entered India a year ago, posted a net loss of Rs 321 crore while its biggest rival Flipkart more than doubled losses to Rs 400 crore.

Despite having a monopolistic position, higher web traffic and sales, IRCTC can’t command a valuation similar to Flipkart or Snapdeal, feel experts.

“Being a government company, its slow decision making, red tapism, less innovation leads to non interest by investors, which in turn leads to a lower valuation. Margins of travel are much lower than margins commanded by selling goods online too,” said Rakesh Nangia, founder and managing partner of Nangia & Co, a tax and transaction advisory firm.

Also, e-commerce companies sell a wide variety of goods unlike IRCTC, which is mainly a ticketing website with no product mix, making it a less scalable business. According to a report by consulting firm Technopak, the $2.3 billion e-tailing market is expected to swell to $32 billion by 2020 and account for 3% of the total Indian retail sector by then.

IRCTC, on its part, tried widening its business by partnering Yebhi.com in a revenue-sharing model last year. Electronics, clothes and home furnishings were sold on the IRCTC site, which also promoted online shopping with a link to Yebhi’s portal. However, the year-long contracted wasn’t extended.

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft Corp announced its ‘Windows 10’ operating system on Tuesday to replace the largely unpopular Windows 8, skipping a number to mark a leap toward unifying the way people work on tablets, phones and traditional computers.

The next version of Microsoft’s flagship product, which still runs the vast majority of personal computers and is used by 1.5 billion customers worldwide, is aimed at recapturing the lucrative business market, which generally ignored the new-look Windows 8.

Windows 10 will be “our greatest enterprise platform ever,” said Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s head of operating systems, at an event in San Francisco. Only 20 percent of organizations migrated to Windows 8, which was released two years ago, according to tech research firm Forrester. Many PC users disliked the touch-optimized interface and bemoaned the loss of the traditional start-button pop-up menu.

He said Windows 10, long known by the project name ‘Threshold’ internally, represented a new type of system for the company, as it seeks to unify computing as mobile devices proliferate. The name represented that leap, he said.

“Windows 10 adapts to the devices customers are using, from Xbox to PCs and phones to tablets and tiny gadgets,” said Myerson.

Microsoft faces an uphill struggle in reigniting excitement about Windows. With the rise of Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad, and Google Inc’s Android devices, Windows no longer plays a central role in many people’s on-screen lives.

From a virtual monopoly on personal computing 10 years ago, Windows now runs only about 14 percent of devices, according to research firm Gartner.

pic::Start menu of Windows 10

Reaction to the news was cautious. Microsoft shares fell 8 cents to $46.36 on Nasdaq.

“It’s a bold statement for Microsoft to make,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. “So far there’s not as much meat on the bone as we would have wanted, although it’s still very early days.”

An early version of the software, demonstrated on stage by Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore, showed two modes, one optimized for touch-controlled tablets, and one for PCs using a mouse and keyboard. Users can switch between the two depending on the device.

Myerson did not say exactly how or when the new Windows would be rolled out, but other executives said Microsoft was aiming for a full release in spring 2015. A technical preview can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website, starting on Wednesday, for users to try out and give the company feedback.

“They were trying to start the messaging for a product that won’t actually ship until sometime around the middle of next year,” said Gartner analyst Steve Kleynhans at the event. “This was to tell the PC installed base that there is a future and it doesn’t have to be covered over in brightly colored tiles, or force them to abandon everything they’ve learned over the past 15 years.”

Myerson said his team toyed with calling the new product Windows One to emphasize the unity of all the companies’ products, but noted that name had already been used.